Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi: UN-Habitat Executive Director Dinner

Remarks by the Minister of Human Settlements, Mmamoloko Kubayi, UN-Habitat Executive Director Dinner, Constitutional Hill, 12 October 2022

Programme Director: Deputy Minister Nkadimeng;
Executive Director of Un-Habitat: Ms. Maimunah Mohd Shariff;
Former President of the Republic of South Africa: Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka MEC for Human Settlements and Infrastructure, Mr. Lebogang Maile;
MEC of Human Settlements in Eastern Cape, Ms. Siphokazi Lusithi Deputy Minister of DTIC Nomalungelo Gina;
Mayor of City of Joburg: Cllr. Dada Morero;
Chancellor of University of Venda: Ms. Mojanku Gumbi Regional Director of Africa Mr Omar Sylla Distinguished Participants;
Ladies and Gentlemen;

Good evening,

On behalf of the government and the people of South Africa, I am truly delighted to welcome the Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Ms. Maimunah Mohd Sharif and your delegation to South Africa and wish you a productive and enjoyable stay in our country.

Our country is privileged to host you for the next few days as your visit is a reaffirmation of the strong relations between UN-Habitat and South Africa, especially our Department

of Human Settlements. Your visit was planned for December last year, but it had to be cancelled when the Omicron COVID-19 variant made international travel to South Africa very difficult. This being your first visit, I am pleased that you will be with us for a week and you will be visiting the various provinces which will give a better sense of the beauty and the diversity of our country.

You will also be meeting with partners on the work that UN-Habitat has been doing in South Africa and will be visiting selected projects and communities to gain a good understanding of our approach, successes and challenges in addressing the goals of the New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goal 11 on making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

The Republic of South Africa and UN-Habitat have been working closely together for the past 25 years with the first Memorandum of Understanding signed in 1996 for the implementation of the UN-Habitat’s Safer Cities Programme in the country. This was followed by a number of collaborative projects, including the Urban Safety programme, which has spawned a lot of positive outcomes for South Africa as well as the evolution of UN-Habitat’s Urban Safety Programme globally.

South Africa was an active proponent of the inclusion of Sustainable Development Goal 11 in Agenda 2030, and ensured that the issue of informal settlements and slums was adequately addressed in the New Urban Agenda, including hosting an international Habitat III meeting on informal settlements, where the Pretoria Declaration was adopted as a formal input to the New Urban Agenda.

It is just a little over half a decade since Heads of State and Government, Ministers and High Representatives, gathered at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) to adopt the New Urban Agenda. To ensure inclusivity, the adoption of the New Urban Agenda included the participation of subnational and local governments, parliamentarians, civil society, indigenous peoples and local communities, the private sector, professionals and practitioners, the scientific and academic community, and other relevant stakeholders.

As we move closer to the year 2030, there is a need to hasten the implementation of the sustainable development goals and the New Urban Agenda so that we can move closer to achieving peace and prosperity for all people and the planet.

In line with the global commitment in SDG 11 to Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable and the sections in the New Urban Agenda which deal with informal settlements and slums, South Africa has placed informal settlement upgrading as a pivotal focal point for the creation of sustainable human settlements in urban centres. We have also adopted the development of integrated human settlements as a guiding policy response to address historical exclusionary spatial arrangements of the Apartheid era. This policy seeks to transform the spatial housing

settlements in South Africa by creating more inclusive, denser, mixed‐use urban areas.

While our collaboration with UN-Habitat has yielded tangible results, it has been ad hoc

and limited in scope and impact. The desire in Government and UN-Habitat to have a more comprehensive but focused and impactful collaboration, resulted in the process of developing a Collaboration Framework which began shortly after Habitat III. The purpose of this Collaboration Framework is to jointly establish a firm base between South Africa and UN-Habitat to work towards achieving South Africa’s aspiration for sustainable urban development, set in NDP 2030.

We intend entering into a Memorandum of Understanding with UN-Habitat, which commits us to jointly prepare a proposal for a deeper partnership between South Africa and UN-Habitat. We also working towards getting the necessary government approvals, so that UN-Habitat can set up an office here in South Africa as soon as next year. Our partnership will include the following areas of collaboration:

• Improved living conditions of communities living in informal settlements through accelerating informal settlements transformation in an inclusive and participatory manner;
• Area-based approach to crime and violence prevention (including through Municipal structures and Capacity building for Community Engagements)

• Improving accountability and fortifying municipal governance, and improving access to financing;
• Urban monitoring system that factors diversity of cities and urban areas including smart cities;
• Built urban and community resilience to address social, physical, economic and environmental vulnerabilities and reduce risks of disasters and effects of climate change through an integrated planning approach (aligned to District Development Model);
• Improved, resilient and vibrant public space, equitable, culturally embedded place-making, and local economic development

During the eleventh World Urban Forum in Poland in June, I hosted a side event on a Visioning Platform for a Global Action Plan to Tackle the Slum Challenge in partnership with UN-Habitat. Among other things, it emerged in the discussion that UN-Habitat is currently preparing a Global Report on “Solutions to Slums” with a proposed “Global Action Plan” to accelerate the implementation in the last eight remaining years before 2030 of Sustainable Development Goal 11. In particular, the focus was on Target 11.1 which is to “ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums”.

In this regard, thank you for affording us the opportunity to hosting the Launch of the Global Action Plan Framework on Informal Settlements and Slums in South Africa to prepare for the development and tabling of a Global Action Plan at the United Nations’ Habitat Assembly in 2023. Again I am pleased that the launch of the Global Action Plan Framework has coincided with the visit of the Executive Director of the UN-Habitat. This is because the Global Action Plan Framework is a continued effort to find a path of least resistance in achieving our commitments to our people and the planet of which she has been a great champion.

In the final analysis our work, it is about the betterment of people lives. Our work is about the reduction of inequality, inequity and poverty. It is about inclusivity of the marginalized groups in our society in particular women and youth. For an example,, making it easy for women to attain and inherit title deeds can unlock massive economic opportunities for women through access to finance to start businesses and send their children to school. In essence, I am saying we need to place women at the centre of our people-centred approach to development in order to accelerate the empowerment of communities and elimination of slums and informal settlements.